One of the difficulties involved in discussing the threats that Muslims face today is the tendency of those having the conversations to change the subject. For example, there are very few conversations about Islam today which do not ultimately end up touching upon the type of clothing that many Muslim women choose to wear. Instead of focusing on Donald Trump's Muslim travel bans, or the meteoric rise of right-wing white supremacist neo-Nazi groups in virtually every industrialized nation, many Westerners still cannot lower their obsessive gaze from female Muslim religious attire.

QUESTION: What explains this persistent fixation on female religious attire rather than on political threats like travel bans or white nationalist movements?

Arsalan Iftikhar, Fear of a Muslim Planet_ Gl…, loc. 356